Cruciform is a term for physical manifestations resembling a common

cross A cross is a geometrical figure consisting of two intersecting lines or bars, usually perpendicular to each other. The lines usually run vertically and horizontally. A cross of oblique lines, in the shape of the Latin letter X, is termed a sa ...

or Christian cross. The label can be extended to architectural shapes, biology, art, and design.

Cruciform architectural plan

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...

churches are commonly described as having a cruciform architecture. In

Early Christian Early Christianity (up to the First Council of Nicaea in 325) spread from the Levant, across the Roman Empire, and beyond. Originally, this progression was closely connected to already established Jewish centers in the Holy Land and the Jewish d ...

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

and other

Eastern Orthodox Eastern Orthodoxy, also known as Eastern Orthodox Christianity, is one of the three main branches of Chalcedonian Christianity, alongside Catholicism and Protestantism. Like the Pentarchy of the first millennium, the mainstream (or "canonical") ...

forms of

church architecture Church architecture refers to the architecture of buildings of churches, convents, seminaries etc. It has evolved over the two thousand years of the Christian religion, partly by innovation and partly by borrowing other architectural styles as ...

this is likely to mean a

tetraconch A tetraconch, from the Greek for "four shells", is a building, usually a church or other religious building, with four apses, one in each direction, usually of equal size. The basic ground plan of the building is therefore a Greek cross. They are m ...

plan, a

Greek cross The Christian cross, with or without a figure of Christ included, is the main religious symbol of Christianity. A cross with a figure of Christ affixed to it is termed a ''crucifix'' and the figure is often referred to as the ''corpus'' (La ...

, with arms of equal length or, later, a

cross-in-square A cross-in-square or crossed-dome floor plan, plan was the dominant architectural form of middle- and late-period Byzantine Empire, Byzantine church architecture, churches. It featured a square centre with an internal structure shaped like a cross ...

plan. In the Western churches, a cruciform architecture usually, though not exclusively, means a church built with the layout developed in

Gothic architecture Gothic architecture (or pointed architecture) is an architectural style that was prevalent in Europe from the late 12th to the 16th century, during the High and Late Middle Ages, surviving into the 17th and 18th centuries in some areas. It e ...

. This layout comprises the following: *An east end, containing an

altar An altar is a table or platform for the presentation of religious offerings, for sacrifices, or for other ritualistic purposes. Altars are found at shrines, temples, churches, and other places of worship. They are used particularly in paga ...

and often with an elaborate, decorated window, through which light will shine in the early part of the day. *A west end, which sometimes contains a

baptismal font A baptismal font is an article of church furniture used for baptism. Aspersion and affusion fonts The fonts of many Christian denominations are for baptisms using a non-immersive method, such as aspersion (sprinkling) or affusion (pouring). ...

, being a large decorated bowl, in which water can be firstly, blessed (dedicated to the use and purposes of God) and then used for

baptism Baptism (from grc-x-koine, βάπτισμα, váptisma) is a form of ritual purification—a characteristic of many religions throughout time and geography. In Christianity, it is a Christian sacrament of initiation and adoption, almost inv ...

. *North and south

transept A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform churches, a transept is an area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform ("cross-shaped") building withi ...

s, being "arms" of the cross and often containing rooms for gathering, small side

chapels A chapel is a Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. Firstly, smaller spaces inside a church that have their own altar are often called chapels; the Lady chapel is a common type ...

, or in many cases other necessities such as an organ and toilets. *The crossing, which in later designs often was under a tower or dome. In churches that are not oriented with the altar at the geographical east end, it is usual to refer to the altar end as "liturgical east" and so forth. Methodist tabernacles also have a cruciform shape. Another example of ancient cruciform architecture can be found in Herod's temple, the second Jewish temple.

Cruciform DNA

DNA can undergo transitions to form a cruciform shape, including a structure called a

Holliday junction A Holliday junction is a branched nucleic acid structure that contains four double-stranded arms joined. These arms may adopt one of several conformations depending on buffer salt concentrations and the sequence of nucleobases closest to the ju ...

. This structure is important for the critical biological processes of DNA recombination and repair mutations that occur in the cell.

Cruciform joint

A cruciform joint is a specific joint in which four spaces are created by the welding of three plates of metal at right angles.

Cruciform manuscript

A cruciform manuscript was a form of

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...

/ Insular manuscript written with the words in a block shaped like a cross.

Cruciform melody

In music, a

melody A melody (from Greek language, Greek μελῳδία, ''melōidía'', "singing, chanting"), also tune, voice or line, is a Linearity#Music, linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most liter ...

of four pitches where a straight line drawn between the outer pair bisects a straight line drawn between the inner pair, thus forming a cross. In its simplest form, the cruciform melody is a

changing tone In music, changing tones (also called double neighboring tones and neighbor group) consists of two consecutive non-chord tones. The first moves in one direction by a step from a chord tone, then skips by a third in the opposite direction to ano ...

, where the melody ascends or descends by

step Step(s) or STEP may refer to: Common meanings * Stairs#Step, Steps, making a staircase * Walking * Dance move * Military step, or march ** Marching Arts Films and television * Steps (TV series), ''Steps'' (TV series), Hong Kong * Step (film), ' ...

, skips below or above the first pitch, then returns to the first pitch by step. Often representative of the Christian cross, such melodies are cruciform in their retrogrades or inversions.

Johann Sebastian Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the '' Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard w ...

, whose last name may be represented in tones through a

musical cryptogram A musical cryptogram is a cryptogrammatic sequence of musical symbols, a sequence which can be taken to refer to an extra-musical text by some 'logical' relationship, usually between note names and letters. The most common and best known examples ...

known as the

BACH motif In music, the BACH motif is the motif, a succession of notes important or characteristic to a piece, ''B flat, A, C, B natural''. In German musical nomenclature, in which the note ''B natural'' is named ''H'' and the ''B flat'' named ...

that is a cruciform melody, employed the device extensively. The subject of the fugue in c-sharp minor from ''

The Well-Tempered Clavier ''The Well-Tempered Clavier'', BWV 846–893, consists of two sets of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys for keyboard by Johann Sebastian Bach. In the composer's time, ''clavier'', meaning keyboard, referred to a variety of in ...

'' Book I is cruciform. See also:

Cross motif In music, the cross motif is a motif. A motif (''Crux fidelis'') was used by Franz Liszt Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hunga ...

Cruciform tail

Some airplanes use a ''cruciform'' tail design, wherein the horizontal stabilizer is positioned midway up the vertical stabilizer, forming a cruciform shape when viewed from the front or rear. Some examples are the

F-9 Cougar The Grumman F9F/F-9 Cougar is a carrier-based fighter aircraft for the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps. Based on Grumman's earlier F9F Panther, the Cougar replaced the Panther's straight wing with a more modern swept wing. ...

, the

F-10 Skyknight The Douglas F3D Skyknight (later designated F-10 Skyknight) is an American twin-engined, mid-wing fighter aircraft, jet fighter aircraft manufactured by the Douglas Aircraft Company in El Segundo, California. The F3D was designed as a carrier- ...

and the

Sud Aviation Caravelle The Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle is a French jet airliner produced by Sud Aviation. It was developed by SNCASE in the early 1950s and made its maiden flight on 27 May 1955. It included some de Havilland designs and components developed for t ...

. The cruciform tail gives the benefit of clearing the aerodynamics of the tail away from the wake of the engine, while not requiring the same amount of strengthening of the vertical tail section in comparison with a T-tail design.

Cruciform sword

The plain sword used by

knight A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the Gr ...

s, distinctive due to the flat bar used as a

guard Guard or guards may refer to: Professional occupations * Bodyguard, who protects an individual from personal assault * Crossing guard, who stops traffic so pedestrians can cross the street * Lifeguard, who rescues people from drowning * Prison ...

. The overall shape of the sword when held point down is that of a cross. It is believed this shape was encouraged by the church to remind Knights of their religion. It was however very popular due to the protection it offered to the hand and certain attacks that rely on the cross to trap the blade of the enemy. See

Sword A sword is an edged, bladed weapon intended for manual cutting or thrusting. Its blade, longer than a knife or dagger, is attached to a hilt and can be straight or curved. A thrusting sword tends to have a straighter blade with a pointed ti ...

Cruciform web design

Cruciform web designs use a cross-shaped web page that expands to fill the width and height of the

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

window. There are a number of different approaches to implementing them.

Cruciform product design

In addition to common cross-shaped products, such as key chains and magnets, certain designers have gone so far as to create cruciform devices and accessories. For example, the mass-produced cruciform MP3 player "Saint B", or the "iBelieve", an accessory that converts the original iPod Shuffle into a cross shape designed by Scott Wilson in 2005. The cruciform MP3 players often come preloaded with audio files of the New Testament, but are mainly purchased for users to proudly display their faith.

References

{{Reflist Church architecture